Here are 7 of the best link baits our team have done so far ranked by the amount of traffic they have received from Stumbleupon, IMO the best social bookmarking site for getting traffic.

According to Google Analytics roughly 65% of the Stumbleupon hits convert into unique page views.

1/ 30 of the World’s Greatest Wedding Cakes

This link bait was published on the FreeDating.co.uk site on the 24th of May this year and is by far the most popular bait we have done so far. It’s basically just a collection of amazing wedding cakes that our linkbait guy was able to find around the web. It did incredible on a bunch of social sites and got linked to by loads of blogs.

Stumbleupon hits: 1.2 million

2/ 5 Creepy Beach Sculptures To Scare Off Sunbathers

This one was published on the Premier Holidays website back in December 2008 and everybody loved it. The post features 5 super creepy beach sculptures from round the World: the pictures are awesome. As soon as Neatorama linked to it the post went viral and attracted lots of links.

Stumbleupon hits: 506K

3/ How Not To Clean A Window

We put this one on the Master Cleaners blog on March the 1st this year and as soon as it got published the post set on fire. The linkbait is a selection of photographs of very brave or stupid people very dangerously cleaning windows. It hit the homepage of Meneame and Yahoo buzz and got plenty of links.

Stumbleupon hits: 477k

4/ 10 Beautifully Intricate Locks

We put this brilliant linkbait on the Locksmiths R Us blog on June the 16th this year and almost all of the people who commented on it really liked it. The blog post shows pictures of 10 old fashioned and beautiful locks and at the bottom there is a video. It got featured on some very popular blogs such as Dark Roasted Blend and Mental Floss.

Stumbleupon hits: 394k

5/ 10 Enchanting Tree Tunnels

I put this bait on a web directory I run called Killer Directory on the 6th of August 2009. It is simply 10 photographs of tree tunnels: streets or paths lined with trees where the branches have arched over to form natural tunnels. The post did really well on reddit and got linked to by quite a few blogs.

Stumbleupon hits: 89k

6/ Infuriating Wheelchair Ramps

This funny linkbait was put online on August the 9th 2010 on the RollaRamp wheelchair ramps blog and people on the social networks adored it. The article shows pictures of poorly designed wheelchair ramps that are difficult for people who are in wheelchairs to use. The bait did well and got lots of links from wheelchair bloggers.

Stumbleupon hits: 48k

7/ The World’s Most Unique Headphones

We did this one for online electronics store Crescent Electronics and it went online on the 6th of June earlier this year. The post shows photographs of the World’s most unique headphones including antler headphones, Star Wars headphones and more. The bait was quite successful and got linked to by some decent gadget blogs.

Stumbleupon hits: 38k

Like what you see? Want to get lots of social traffic and organic links for your site? Contact us today for a free proposal.

Posted in Social Media News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.

The results are very close so it is hard to tell who is getting the most by looking at the graph, but if you look at the traffic rank for each site you will see that Stumbleupon and Reddit are both supposed to be getting more traffic then digg. Here are the traffic ranks for each site:

• Stumbleupon – 117th most popular site on the web.
• Reddit – 135th most popular site on the web.
• Digg – 138th most popular site on the web.

I am not surprised that Stumbleupon has come out on top, our linkbait articles always seem to get lots of traffic from the social bookmarking site, one of them that we did a few years ago has had almost half a million visitors from it and another that we did just a couple of months ago has already had 274K.

Up until a few months ago digg was way ahead of both of them in the Alexa rankings, I think the drop in traffic could be something to do with the site re-design that they did last August.

Posted in Social Media News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.

I checked it out and it is the real British Telecom offering SEO and PPC services, you can check the website out here.

BT are probably the biggest company ever to start selling SEO and PPC services.

Their SEO packages include most of the things you would expect to get with a basic SEO pack, with the option 1 for £74.99 per month + a £100 setup fee you get:

• Keyword selection
• Comprehensive website audit
• Recommendations document
• In depth telephone consultation
• Unlimited email access to online marketing specialists
• Google Site Map production and provision for upload
• Monthly SEO reports position reporting
• Best practice SEO documentation & guides

The only thing that’s missing is link building, however links are mentioned in their option 2 package which costs £349.99 per month + £100 setup:

• All the features of Option 1 plus:
• Unlimited 0800 phone-based support
• Link building via 3 bespoke articles (monthly)
• Directory submissions to up to 50 targeted directories
• Enhanced reporting
• Enhanced reporting of keywords & competitor link analysis

That doesn’t sound too bad, it could go either way I guess depending on the quality of the articles they are creating and the quality of the web directories and article directories they are submitting to. For a similar price we will include submissions to all of the best paid directories such as BOTW and Yahoo etc. If they are just submitting to the free ones then there is less chance of your links getting approved and sticking around.

Thoughts?

Posted in SEO News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.

Do any of you get annoyed when you see usability and web design sites with phat PageRank scores of 7, 8 or 9 out of 10 whilst our very best SEO sites are only getting a score of 5 or 6? I do, here are 4 really popular SEO websites that I think deserve higher PR scores:

1/ In my honest opinion SEOmoz.org should have a PageRank score of at least 7/10 on its homepage. There are 156,000 organic links pointing to it and the SEOmoz.org domain has 1.8 million links in total including link from places like the New York Times and the BBC – the kind of links you drool over. SEOmoz haven’t cheated the system, they got those links because they are incredible at what they do, so why are they not getting the PageRank they deserve?

2/ Next up is SEO Book, another website that should have a PageRank 7/10 on its homepage, but it doesn’t because someone at Google thinks we need to be kept in check. The site has a similar link profile to SEOmoz with 176,000 links pointing at its homepage and there are about half a million links pointing to the SEOBook.com domain in total including dream links from places like The Guardian and the Wall Street Journal.

3/ Jim Boykin’s site We Build Pages has attracted organic links from places like Search Engine Land and Labnol.org thanks to it having kick ass articles published on its blog. Plus the free SEO tools that it offers have gained the site loads. The WeBuildPages.com domain has around 32,000 links pointing to its homepage and about 48,000 links in total. Currently the We Build Pages homepage only has a PageRank score of 5/10, the amount of quality links it has should easily make it a 6.

4/ The BigMouthMedia website has been around for years and it has some amazing links from places like Wired and W3 thanks to it having white papers published on it and about 5 years worth of industry news. According to siteexplorer there are about 26,000 links pointing to the BigMouthMedia homepage and there about 38,000 links pointing to the site as a whole. The BigMouthMedia homepage only has a PR score of 5/10.

Stop spanking our PR scores Google!

Posted in SEO News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.

I just went to submit one of my client’s to Bruce Stone’s WOW Directory and on the submission page it says this:

“Express Review($1.00 Special) by Paypal (Lifetime Listing)”

WOW Directory is a great looking site and it has a unique category structure that makes it so you get a good few relevant links for your site with a submission, plus you are allowed to put some keywords in your link title, so it’s good for getting a boost on Google.

At the regular price of $43 it’s great value for money, $1 for a link there is just insane. What the hell are you waiting for? Go to WOW Directory and submit now. The offer is only open for today.

Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.

Image credit: ContactDubai.com

Back in 2007 I wrote a post about article submission being a poor SEO tactic. Since then the article has had about 5,000 visitors that mainly came from Google and it’s still getting good traffic now. Because it has been so popular I just gave it a bit of an update and added information about how to submit to article directories and which ones to use.

Over the years I have been screwed over in various ways by a few directories such as Article Alley, Articles Base and Isnare, the 1st two added nofollow to my author signature links and Isnare took a payment from me for a featured submission and then never published it or got back to me when I emailed.

Anyway, fortunately there are a handful of decent general article directories that you can rely on, here are my top 4:

1/ Ezine Articles is the best article directory on the web, it has good standards, a PageRank 6/10 and currently, according to Alexa it’s the 185th most popular site on the web. The site is very easy to use, just click onto submit articles and follow instructions to get started.

2/ My 2nd favourite article directory is Buzzle, I have been an author there for over a year now, my articles are usually published within 24 hours and indexed by Google in no time. The site has a PageRank score of 5/10 and it’s Alexa rank is in the top 2,000. You have to apply to get accepted as an author at Buzzle and it can take a few weeks, but IMO it’s worth the wait.

3/ Another great article site is Go Articles, it’s ran by the Jayde Online Network, it has a Google PageRank of 6/10 and its Alexa score is inside the top 3,500. Submitting is a piece of cake, click on submit articles and then fill in the register as a new member form to get started. Articles are published fast, usually in less then a week.

4/ Article Dashboard is a mother of an article directory with, according to siteexplorer nearly 4,000,000 links that have come from other article directories using their script. The site has a Google PageRank score of 4/10 and its Alexa traffic rank is about 5,000. Click on the sign up link in the top right hand corner, follow instructions and start submitting your content.

Make sure you read our article submission blog post before you start using these sites, if done correctly and in moderation article submission can be a good small part of your link building and SEO strategy.

FYI: I think the UK needs a really good article directory so I have just registered OriginalArticles.co.uk and I plan to launch that in the next month or so.

Posted in Link Building News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.

Image: Google search for social media traffic

Last week I was reading an article at Search Engine Roundtable about Google pulling website titles from Google maps and according to a comment on the post Googler, John Mueller has said this:

“We may choose to replace titles which are repeated on a number of pages or which otherwise appear to be suboptimal”

So is this the reason why I am seeing the phrase Social Media Traffic – at the start of my page title tag when I search Google for that particular phrase? I am not too sure.

My actual meta page title tag for the page coming up is this:

“Just How Much Traffic Can You Get From Social Media Websites?”

Google are currently showing this:

“Social Media Traffic – Just How Much Traffic Can You Get From Social Media Websites?

You check the Google cache for the page here and there is no mention of the extra phrase at the start of the page title tag.

Pretty strange right? My thoughts are, if it gets me a higher CTR then I am all for it.

Posted in Search Engine News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.

I haven’t really used Chrome that much for work yet, all I have been using it for so far is watching TV shows and movies online – DIVX videos download about 10 times faster then they do with Firefox and IE.

Anyway, I just clicked to view the source code of this blog for some reason and I saw the jazzy colours that Chrome displays when you are viewing source codes. Looking at code is really boring so I think its cool that Google have made it a little easier on the eyes.

Once all of the SEO tools I use are out in Chrome, I may well be making a full switch.

Posted in SEO News By David Eaves, a UK search engine optimisation specialist.

“digital point forum pr has been reduced”

So I’m guessing this searcher is curious to know why Digital Point Solutions and Digital Point Forums have both had their PageRank scores dramatically reduced:

• www.digitalpoint.com is down from a PR 7/10 to a PR 4/10
• forums.digitalpoint.com is down from a PR 6/10 to a PR 4/10

Here are 3 good reasons why Google might have spanked their PageRank scores.

1. The buying and selling of signature links amongst its users – Buying and selling links that pass PageRank is against the guidelines, this alone could warrant a PR penalty.

2. The link sales forum – Plenty of guideline breaking links get sold in that forum every day, again this could warrant a penalty.

3. DP COOP – The Digital Point Coop link exchange network is still active and spamming Google’s search results to this day.

And that’s just for starters, I’m sure if I looked into it further I could find a few more.

Posted in Search Engine News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.

So about two or three weeks ago I was watching Juice I think and I came up with a couple of IMO really good social media yo mama jokes, since then I have been trying to think of 3 more to get my top 5 list and thanks to a bit of help from Mr David Towers I have them, so here goes:

1. Yo mama so stupid that when I told her I was on digg, she asked if I needed a shovel.

2. Yo mama so fat that when I told her I was on delicious, she asked if she could have a bite.

3. Yo mama so clumsy that when I told her I was on Stumbleupon, she said I took a stumble yesterday and grazed my knee.

4. Yo mama so dizzy that when I told her I was on Sphinn, she said I went for a drive this morning.

5. Yo mama so crazy that when I told her I was on Plime, she said I prefer oranges myself.

Posted in Social Media News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.